Jamar watched as Taylor was wheeled past the waiting area and through double doors. He slumped into a hard plastic seat, rested his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands.
“If you’re embarking on a guilt trip, don’t.”
He looked up at her friend standing over him. “It’s pretty hard not to feel guilty,” Jamar said.
“Look, I’ve only known that chick for a few months,” she said, pointing toward the door where they’d taken Taylor. “And I know how impulsive she can be. You didn’t do that.Shedid that.”
“Only because I pushed her,” Jamar said.
“Or because she’s strong-willed, hardheaded, and takes unnecessary risks,” London retorted. She pulled a phone from the pocket of her long white lab coat. “I need to let Samiah know what’s going on.”
As she walked away with the phone to her ear, Jamar remained in the uncomfortable waiting room chair, suffocating under the guilt weighing down on him. He’d known the more he pushed Taylor, the more she would push right back. Until she pushed too far.
He didn’t even consider what effect this could have on her work until Taylor mentioned it. He could pay her hospital bill, but what if she’d permanently damaged her ankle? If there was one thing he knew about, it was career-ending injuries.
If she couldn’t work, what would she do?
He could ask that same question of himself. What would happen if he took a blow to the knee that permanently knocked him out of commission? How would he support his family or Silas’s family? What kind of spokesperson would he be for Taylor’d Conditioning?
If there even was a Taylor’d Conditioning after those doctors got through with her back there.
Jamar squeezed his eyes shut.
Hehadto figure out a way to make this up to Taylor. Although he had no idea how.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Taylor swiped through the selfies she’d forced Jamar to take with her before leaving the hospital three days ago, and posted another to her Instagram account. Just because she was laid up with a bum ankle didn’t mean their fake relationship had to suffer.
She set the phone on the coffee table and went back to her comic book. As she flipped through the latest in the Nisekoi: False Love series—big ups to London for scoring her a copy—she absently reached for the bottle of kombucha Samiah had placed on the coffee table before she left to run errands. Her pull on the straw was met with nothing but air.
“Well, shit,” Taylor said, squinting at the empty bottle.
She gingerly shifted her propped foot on the pillow, trying to decide if it was worth the trouble to hobble to the refrigerator on those stupid crutches.
Her ankle had turned from a bluish red to a deep, dark purple, but at least it was no longer the size of a cantaloupe. Now it was only a grapefruit. And the persistent throb had lessened to an on-again/off-again ache, so yay her.
Taylor cut her eyes to the vial of prescription pain pills the ER doctor had prescribed and pointed her middle finger at it. Every single pill was still in the bottle. She’d popped a couple of the ibuprofen she kept in her purse for cramps—because there wasn’t a person out there tough enough to handle cramps—but that was the extent of her medicating. A measly little ankle sprain wasn’t enough to keep her down.
She repositioned her leg and winced.
“Dammit,” she hissed. Mental toughness only went so far. Three days later and this still hurt like a bitch.
After being fitted with a plastic ankle brace in the ER, she had insisted that she was capable of taking care of herself, but neither Samiah nor London would hear of it. Instead of driving Taylor to her apartment, Samiah had brought her to her condo.
Thank goodness for stubborn friends. Samiah’s help had been a godsend over these last few days. Of course, it didn’t matter where Taylor was physically—whether holed up in this apartment or her own, she still had far too much time to dwell on the seriousness of what she now faced.
She had banked her entire future on being able to make a living teaching people how to live healthy, fulfilling lives. She had never, not once, anticipated what would happen if she couldn’t do this job.
She hadn’t considered herself lucky as she rolled around in pain on that rubber floor, but Taylor now recognized just how fortunate she’d been to have only suffered a grade 1 sprain. She could have easily broken her ankle and been dealt a prognosis a million times worse than simply staying off her feet for the next couple of weeks. Her injury had forced her to ask a question she had only allowed to live in the very far-off corners of her mind.
How would she support herself if she could not work as a fitness instructor?
“Stop being an ableist dick,” Taylor muttered.
There were double-amputee fitness instructors who could kick her ass in the gym. She could still do this job even if her ankle never healed, but this still brought home the danger of having all her eggs in one basket.
Taylor’s breath hitched, panic overwhelming her as she accepted that she had no plan. She had zero fallback options. The few things she’d done in the past, like driving for ride-share services or scoring the occasional meal prep job, weren’t enough to sustain her. Her recent brush with the possibility of having to sleep in her car was suddenly all too real.
